


You, After The Rain

by misanthropyray



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropyray/pseuds/misanthropyray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost everyone is gone now, so nothing is more important than protecting those you love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You, After The Rain

The clouds are looming outside and it looks like rain. There are no weather reports anymore, so looking out of the window is the most accurate and only way to predict these things. John hurries upstairs for a shower; the cleaner you are, the safer you’ll be.

Whilst the water cascades over him, intermittently hot and cold in jagged spurts, John plans his trip out. Reducing the time spent outside is too important to skip the planning stage of any outing. It shouldn’t be too risky this time though. They are low on food and there are some shops relatively close by that sustained minimal damage from looters, though there aren’t enough people left for looting to be much of a problem anymore. The basic survival instinct has overtaken greed.

When he’s showering, he’s much more thorough than he ever was before it happened. Every fingernail must be scrubbed and cleaned; his bellybutton gets a thorough going over and behind the ears is always crucial. The cleaner you are, the less of a scent you’ll carry and the higher the chance you’ll survive.

After he’s clean, he dries himself and puts on some clean clothes.

Going downstairs, he hears the rattling of metal against metal. John emerges out into the living room to see Sherlock straining against his collar, the chain attaching him to the piping clanking in his attempts to lunge at John, the collar cutting into his neck. It would be painful, if he could still feel pain. Sherlock's hands reach out to him, swiping at the air, useless and uncoordinated.

John simply stands for a moment, looking at him. He knew full well that was nothing left of the man he once knew; no shred of that razor sharp mind, none of memories of the days they’d spent fighting crime in the streets of London and the nights they’d spent beneath the covers sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings. But neither could he let him go.

Almost everyone is gone now, so nothing is more important than protecting those you love.

He had failed, but the moment Sherlock had been bitten by one of Them, John had made his decision. He would try to carry on like always, taking care of him, making sure he ate and keeping him safe from Them. He loved Sherlock more than he’d ever loved anyone and he couldn’t just let him outside to join the hordes of Them wandering the streets. Even this poor facsimile of the man he loved deserved better than that.

John grabbed his backpack and the umbrella by the door. The rain had begun and beat down against the windows and onto the cold streets outside. He inched the door open to take in the situation on Baker Street; there were two of Them on the corner of Ivor Place and five blindly stumbling around on Baker Street itself but aside from that, the coast was clear. He opened the door and strode out towards the butcher’s shop; the rain was heavy and would wash away his scent before he could be detected.

The fridges had stopped working and the meat was spoiling even in the winter chill, but that didn’t matter for its intended purpose. He shoved a few handfuls of the clingfilm wrapped packages into his bag, laughing quietly to himself as he selected a variety of meats, as if variety even mattered anymore. There were a few eggs left behind the counter which he carefully put into his pockets before leaving.  
His second and final point of call was the newsagents opposite the flat. The actual shop was totally barren, but other survivors had failed to break into the store room. John had changed the broken lock to a padlock he’d found so now had sole control of its spoils. He wasn’t even sure if the padlock was still necessary; it’d been weeks since he’d seen another living person. He selected a few tins of soup and fruit in syrup, along with a few bags of crisps before locking up and crossing the road back to 221b. One good thing about the end of human civilisation was the total lack of traffic.

When he opened the door, Sherlock had been motionless, blindly staring at the wall but snapped his head round as soon as John walked into the room, letting out a guttural growl.

“I missed you too.”

John goes into the kitchen to put away the food, leaving some of the meat on the table.

“Right, so today we have some pork loin and a bit of lamb shank for you. The fridges have stopped working though so it might not be up to the usual standard, sorry.”

He knows this running monologue falls upon deaf ears but this communication was all he had these days. Sometimes, he even thought he saw a glimmer of recognition, the vaguest hint of understanding and in that split second, his heart would feel like it was about to explode out of his chest but he knew he was lying to himself, projecting his own emotions onto the blank canvas.

He unwrapped the raw meat, piling it onto a side plate and scooting it along the floor to within Sherlock’s circle of reach. Sherlock leapt on the plate, ripping the meat apart with his hands and gnashing wildly at it. Whilst his attention was so thoroughly taken, John would indulge himself. Edging towards him, John reached out a hand and gently touches the dark curls of Sherlock's hair. He remembers the countless times that he’d run his hands through that hair before. Coming home after a case was successfully wrapped up, so full of raw excitement and being crushed between Sherlock’s strong chest and the living room wall, hands in his hair and pulling him into a messy kiss. Lying in bed after the first time they had slept together, as he lay on his back and Sherlock’s body curled around him with their legs intertwined, whilst John played with the curls at his neck until he felt his breathing slow into a heavy sleep. Distracting Sherlock from one of his experiments, after a solid day of total silence, trailing his fingers through the unruly locks to bush over his ears and down to his throat, turning his intense concentration from science to something totally different.

It wasn’t the same now; the hair was more tangled now and the scalp beneath it waxen and hard. It would never be the same again, but the memories would be with him until the end.

He knows that it won’t always be like this though; it’s only a matter of time before he becomes one of Them. Sometimes, when it hasn’t rained in weeks and he’s starving and the streets are crawling with Them, he things about ending it and just giving in. He thinks about unlocking the chain and holding Sherlock in his arms and letting go of everything. But not today. They have food and the water is still running and it’s still raining outside. Things are alright today.

 

\---

 

It’s raining outside, finally. It’s been dry for a fortnight, almost a week since their food rain out, and John’s stomach is letting out painful groans of hunger. He showers at full speed, grabs the umbrella and rushes out of the house.

Intense hunger clouds his brain and he only checks the road for a second before opening the door and stepping out. One the pavement outside, one of Them has fallen and is crawling along the ground, grating its undercarriage on the concrete; not looking down, John steps directly into its grasp and the iron grip clamps down on his ankle. Low blood sugar has made his reactions slow and within a split second, his ankle is in the mouth of the snarling creature on the ground, teeth ripping the skin and mercilessly searching for the bone and sinew inside. Crying out, John stamps on the creatures head with every ounce of strength that he has left in him. He hears a crunch but the creature continues. After two more blows to the head, he is finally released and stumbles back through the front door.

There’s a dull pain from the injury but there’s something else along with it; something sharper, like heat tingling and radiating outwards from bleeding wound. The infection is spreading.

He limps back up the steps, leaning on the hand rail to steady himself; opening the door and falling through. Sherlock is pulling against his chain, snarling and bloodthirsty.

“I know you’re hungry. I’m sorry. All I wanted was to look after you, but I can’t do it anymore, I can’t even walk properly.”

He walked towards Sherlock who was on his knees on the floor, reaching out and thrashing his head from side to side. John stood up and limped towards him, taking off his jumper and t-shirt. He reached up to the tiny, brass key that sat on the corner of the bookshelf and turned it over and over in his hands.

“You can smell the blood, can’t you? I thought I could make you happy but I was stupid.”

He caught one of the thrashing hands and held it for a moment, looking at the splintered nails at the ends of the long and once beautiful fingers and stroking the palm. His body craved the contact, yearned to hold him and wrap him in his arms again, to feel warm skin pressed against his own.

He slid the key easily into the lock releasing the heavy chain. John sat down on the floor. Sherlock cocked his head and seemed to hesitate for a moment before making his move. In an instant, long limbs enveloped John, arms and legs tightly wrapped around him, pressing their chests together. John tangled his hands once more into Sherlock’s hair and a second later, he felt the crushing pain of teeth ripping into the base of his neck.

“I’m so sorry, Sherlock. I’m sorry I held you captive, I couldn’t lose you. I should have done this weeks ag-AHHHHH”

The hot pain seared through him and he clawed at the bare expanse of skin on Sherlock’s back. The pain relented momentarily, before teeth clamped down again, this time on his arm, ripping through muscle and splashing thick blood onto the hard wood floor.  
When he’d imagined the end, long before all this started, he’d actually thought that he wanted it to be something like this; holding Sherlock in his arms as the world fading to black around him.

Everything is more distant now. The pain isn’t pain anymore and the tingling heat has wrapped its tendrils of infection round his brain; he’s hungry now. So hungry.

 

And the rain has stopped.


End file.
